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The Gum Thief: A Novel by Douglas Coupland
Book Summary InformationAuthor: Douglas Coupland Edition: Hardcover Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published) Published: 2007-10-02 ISBN: 1596911069 Number of pages: 288 Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Book Reviews of The Gum Thief: A NovelBook Review: great! Summary: 5 StarsThis novel is fun, sincere, well-paced, and somehow timeless, despite Coupland's love of tech pop culture references (youtube this time; the kids just love it).
Aging loser Roger has hit rock bottom: he's divorced, disappointed, and drinking through his days at Staples. He befriends drifting, frustrated goth chick Bethany, and together they mock their mediocre coworkers and support each other through several personal catastrophes. Roger is secretly writing a wonderfully terrible novel (where Coupland gets to play the book-within-a-book trick), which Bethany reads and encourages. And in the process they both discover they have made a sincere connection with another human being.
Many books in the trendy tech-age fiction genre focus on isolation despite technology, loneliness despite constant connectivity. Coupland has taken this theme and dropped it into a context that isn't savvy, sophisticated, or innovative at all. And yet it totally works: the result is that he has managed to distill this theme down into a few choice truths about the human condition. Wonderful!
Summary of The Gum Thief: A NovelThe first and only story of love and looming apocalypse set in the aisles of an office supply superstore. In Douglas Coupland?s ingenious new novel?sort of a Clerks meets Who?s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?we meet Roger, a divorced, middle-aged ?aisles associate? at Staples, condemned to restocking reams of 20-lb. bond paper for the rest of his life. And Roger?s co-worker Bethany, in her early twenties and at the end of her Goth phase, who is looking at fifty more years of sorting the red pens from the blue in aisle 6. One day, Bethany discovers Roger?s notebook in the staff room. When she opens it up, she discovers that this old guy she?s never considered as quite human is writing mock diary entries pretending to be her: and, spookily, he is getting her right. These two retail workers then strike up an extraordinary epistolary relationship. Watch as their lives unfold alongside Roger?s work-in-progress, the oddly titled Glove Pond, a Cheever-era novella gone horribly, horribly wrong. Through a complex layering of narratives, The Gum Thief reveals the comedy, loneliness, and strange comforts of contemporary life. Coupland electrifies us on every page of this witty, wise, and unforgettable novel. Love, death and eternal friendship can all transpire where we least expect them ?and even after tragedy seems to have wiped your human slate clean, stories can slowly rebuild you.
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